


and we slept a hundred years

by blue--phantom (twilightscribe)



Series: we deserve a soft epilogue [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Healing, Noraxia Lives, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 11:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10333667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightscribe/pseuds/blue--phantom
Summary: Everything is very, very quiet.





	

Everything is very, very quiet.

He’s heard the phrase before. And it usually comes before something terrible happens.

But here, now, the terrible thing has already come to pass.

He’s just too late. He missed it.

Tataru is nowhere to be seen. Her desk, usually neat and orderly, is a mess of papers which have spilled over into the floor; the neat stacks of paperwork tipped over and trailing their contents across the table. There’s a puddle of hardened wax, a candle that’s been tipped over.

Yes, something is very, very wrong.

His heart hammers against his chest. He takes the stairs two at a time. He doesn’t know what he’ll find past the doors, but he’s afraid.

It’s like he’s a small child again, being brought to see his brother – his brother, who lay dead, under a sheet so they couldn’t see the way that his chest had burst but Durae had known, he had seen it and he will _never_ forget – and the dread is just the same. It curdles low in his stomach, strangles his voice in his throat, leaving him mute.

The stench hits him first.

Bodies are everywhere, thrown about and blood streaks the walls, the floors. It’s spattered on the floor and drips down from the ceiling. Much has gone brown at the edges, not recent but there’s still wells and pools of crimson in the cracks of the floor.

His footsteps sound loudly on the floor, echoing in halls that used to ring with conversation and laughter.

There is nothing but silence now.

He’s seen death before. Knows the stench of it. But this is different. These were his friends, his companions.

He can’t look at their faces.

Too many eyes stare, unseeing, into space. Their faces frozen in anguish or anger or pain. There is little here but slaughter. And the dead remain, a testament to the violence wreaked upon them.

_Who would do something like this?!_

Anger brings, bright and brittle, in his chest. It pushes against the lump as he rushes through the halls, shoving bile into his throat. But he can’t be sick, not now. It’s not the time to be sick, to mourn, he needs to be strong; he needs to know what’s happened.

The heavy doors of the solar slam open, but there is no Minfilia to greet him.

It’s with a deafening crash that the doors hit the stone walls of the Waking Sands, far too loud in the silence that pervades the entirety of the place.

The solar is remarkably untouched. There’s no blood, but no Minfilia either. The lack of blood is, at the very least, reassuring, because it means that she’s likely not dead; he didn’t see her among those he encountered on his way in, on his desperate search for any survivors.

Here, however, he finds a single survivor.

Noraxia’s wings beat weakly against the floor.

“Walking… one…”

Her wings are crumpled. She rattles when she breathes. Her voice sounds thin, trembling, and weak; she forces the words out.

“This one tried… to stop… them…”

His throat burns. Durae has to blink away the film of water in his eyes. When he kneels down next to her, he’s trembling and his hands won’t stop shaking as he holds them over her.

“It’s… it’s going to be alright, Noraxia,” he tells her. “I’m here now.”

His head feels like it’s been squeezed. But he shoves that away. The Echo isn’t important right now; what matters is Noraxia. She’s _still alive_. He can _save her_. That is the driving thought, that pushes back against the Echo as it tries to force him to see, to know. Whatever it is that it needs to show him, it can wait.

Durae’s hands glow, bright, soft, and white.

He’s never healed a sylph before, unsure if he can, but he’s determined. Healing trances are dangerous, he knows. If he follows it too far, then he can get pulled in and it will kill him just as surely as it will kill whoever he means to save. But Noraxia is strong; she’s held on this long.

“You only need to hold on a little longer,” he murmurs.

His own strength is waning, too much more and he won’t be able to pull back. But he’s so _close_ now that he can’t.

“This one… has… message for… walking one…”

His vision’s gone white. The throbbing in his head reaching a fever pitch. He can’t pull back. It’s too late.

Before, the Echo has granted him clear visions.

He gets a jumble of sounds, of voices, that take time to come into focus.

Durae hears Minfilia telling him to return to the Waking Sands.

It’s like a jolt, a punch to the stomach. Everything rights itself, comes into sharp focus; far too vivid to ever be mistaken for a dream. The details are too clear, the colours too vivid.

He can hear Minfilia’s words, loud and clear. The message that she left with Noraxia for him.

“Seek out Father Iliud at the Church of Saint Adama Landama. There, he will find sanctuary.”

 

 

 

Usually, he wakes from his Echo induced trances in the exact same position he was in before.

However this time, he awakes flat on his back, staring up at the darkened ceiling of the solar.

But, to his immense relief and despite the pounding in his head and lethargy in his limbs, a familiar face pokes its way into his field of vision.

“Walking one?”

He smiles, “Hey Noraxia.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Words:** 923 words
> 
> In case anyone was wondering _I'm still not over this_. And here is my fixing it. You're welcome.


End file.
